Yes Richard, thats what i was looking for. As far as i can tell Kixtart doesn't support associative arrays.

However there is an issue with handling the Dictionary object in Kixtart as described here http://www.kixtart.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=8&Number=154637
that has meant i cant achieve exactly what i want.

There is a workaround described in that post that i might end up using, but its not ideal.